Barrow Point language
| Barrow Point | |
|---|---|
| Region | Queensland, Australia |
| Extinct | by 2005[1] |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-3 |
bpt |
| Glottolog |
barr1247[3] |
| AIATSIS[1] |
Y63.1 |
The Barrow Point language is a moribund Australian Aboriginal language. According to Wurm and Hattori (1981), there was one speaker left at the time.[4]
Classification
Ethnologue (2005) classifies Barrow Point together with Guugu Yimidhirr as a branch of Pama–Nyungan, but this may be a geographical grouping from Dixon.
Phonology
Unusually among Australian languages, Barrow Point has at least two fricative phonemes, /ð/ and /ɣ/. They usually developed from *t̪ and *k, respectively, when preceded by a stressed long vowel, which then shortened.
References
- 1 2 Barrow Point at the Australian Indigenous Languages Database, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies
- ↑ Bowern, Claire. 2011. "How Many Languages Were Spoken in Australia?", Anggarrgoon: Australian languages on the web, December 23, 2011 (corrected February 6, 2012)
- ↑ Nordhoff, Sebastian; Hammarström, Harald; Forkel, Robert; Haspelmath, Martin, eds. (2013). "Barrow Point". Glottolog. Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
- ↑ Barrow Point language at Ethnologue (15th ed., 2005)
- Dixon, R. M. W. (2002). Australian Languages: Their Nature and Development. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521473780, ISBN 978-0-521-47378-1.
See also John Haviland and Roger Hart's Old Man Fog and the Last Aborigines of Barrow Point, ISBN 1-56098-928-9, a novel about the efforts of Hart, a native of the Cape York peninsula, to record and preserve Barrow Point language and culture.
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